EDITOR'S CHOICE -- SCOTT SUTTELL

Venture for America fellows to venture to Cleveland

Blog Entry: July 18, 2013 10:47 AM | Author: SCOTT SUTTELL

The New York Times runs a long profile of the nonprofit Venture for America, which selects fellows to work in eight cities — including Cleveland — that aren't the usual magnets for young college graduates.

By August, 108 fellows will be working at 70 companies as part of the two-year program. Cities that are part of the program are Cleveland, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Detroit, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Philadelphia and Providence, R.I.

The lead anecdote comes from Brentt Baltimore, a graduate of Claremont McKenna College in California who majored in economics and finance. Last year, he turned down a six-figure job at a Los Angeles area hedge fund and instead he took a $33,000-a-year position at Dan Gilbert's Detroit Venture Partners.

Part of his job there “is to scout potential investments and lure companies to Detroit,” according to the story. “He has also started the nonprofit Startup Effect, which teaches local eighth-graders entrepreneurship principles.”

Andrew Yang, 38, who started Venture for America in 2011, tells The Times, “Smart people should be building things. Instead, they become bankers and consultants. We need to do something about talent allocation that pulls our top minds toward these fields.”

Since launching Export Now in 2010, Mr. Lavin's team “has handled customs clearance, trademark registration, order fulfillment, and other back-end tasks for more than 100 consumer brands, from Mack's earplugs, to Totes umbrellas, to Tabasco sauce,” according to the story. “Everything Export Now handles is sold through Alibaba Group's massive Chinese e-commerce sites Taobao and Tmall.”

Mr. Lavin also has a new deal with the National Football League to sell its official apparel and equipment.

The agreement “means Export Now will be handling the logistical headaches of getting NFL apparel and equipment from merchandise providers such as New Era, Nike and Wilson and ready for buyers in China to snap up online. Lavin says the new store will go live in September,” Businessweek.com reports.

“As the two airlines, which combined carry more domestic passengers than any other, have started splicing together their flight schedules this year, travelers say Southwest Airlines agents struggle with AirTran Airways tickets and vice versa, sometimes leaving passengers who have been delayed and need rebooking in the lurch,” according to the story.

The Journal reports that different prices and seat availability “sometimes show up for the same flight on Southwest's and AirTran's online sites. Buying early boarding privileges on Southwest doesn't get you early boarding on connecting AirTran flights. Frequent-flier credits remain separate and Southwest companion passes, awarded to top frequent fliers, can't be used on AirTran.”

The two discount airlines face huge merger hurdles “largely because Southwest lacks a reservation system capable of handling many aspects of AirTran's business, such as international flights,” the newspaper notes.

Instead of merging into one computer system, Southwest, for now, “has agents of both airlines trying to work two reservation systems on different windows of their computer screens so one airline can check in customers from the other,” The Journal concludes.

Asset management: Bruce McCain, chief investment strategist at Key Private Bank in Cleveland, is one of the experts Reuters sought out for this story on Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke's announcement that the central bank still expects to start scaling back its massive asset purchase program later this year.

As always, Mr. Bernanke “left open the option of changing that plan in either direction if the economic outlook shifted,” Reuters notes. But for now, the plan is for the Fed to halt bond buying by mid-2014.

Mr. McCain had this to say about the plan to end the monetary policy that he calls quantitative easing: “I don't think this is a surprise, especially since we're seeing some evidence of some better economic statistics. Our concern is that we're seeing very aggressive estimates for the second half of the year, and growth may not be that robust after QE ends. Even though there will be some QE, just smaller amounts, we could be disappointed by the quality of growth."

One more time: Another Beige Book report from the Federal Reserve, another declaration that the economy in the Cleveland district expanded at a “moderate pace.”

Yesterday's report continued the pattern of the past couple years, in which the Beige Book — an anecdotal overview of the economy issued every six weeks — indicates things are getting better, but not substantially so. Here's how it describes the state of the Cleveland District:

Manufacturing orders and production were steady or higher. The momentum seen in residential construction since the beginning of the year has slowed, but activity remains above year-ago levels. Nonresidential builders experienced a rise in the number of inquiries and backlogs. Retail sales were lackluster during May, while new motor vehicle sales posted moderate gains on a year-over-year basis. Conventional and unconventional natural gas and oil production was stable, and drilling has declined since the start of the year. … Hiring picked up in manufacturing and residential construction. Staffing firm representatives reported that the number of job openings and placements was fairly steady, with vacancies found primarily in health care and manufacturing. Wage pressures remain contained.

Readers are solely responsible for the content of the comments they post here. Comments are subject to the site's terms and conditions of use and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or approval of Crain's Cleveland Business. Readers whose comments violate the terms of use may have their comments removed or all of their content blocked from viewing by other users without notification. Comments may be used in the print edition at editorial discretion.